


you made me a believer

by elainebarrish



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, anyway they're the ult da:i ship, honestly shout out 2 that one where they get stuck together on a mountain, i read that alllllllll the fuckin time lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-03 20:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12153888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elainebarrish/pseuds/elainebarrish
Summary: the note, she thinks, will go unnoticed. it will merely hide beneath Vivienne's end table for years, until Skyhold is empty and dusty and decrepit once more. things do not quite work out like that.





	you made me a believer

**Author's Note:**

> whhaatttt it's the love notes au i've been wanting 2 write since i started reading hermione/minerva + mirandy when i was like 13 !!!!! i made that happen !!! also my first vidya game fic which is ,,,, weird actually but shrug. i hope it works anyway lmao have fun yall title from believer - imagine dragons

Cassandra doesn’t sign it off, just blows lightly on the ink and carefully rolls it into a small scroll, doesn’t even consider leaving her name. She barely intends to leave it for her, barely truly believes that she ever will, doesn’t even know what she would do if she did. She doesn’t know why she’s sat here, poring over her quill, her eyes straining in the low light of the candle, all she knows is that she had to do something, couldn’t merely lay in bed for hours and hours thinking about her, unable to sleep. She needs to move, to stop wallowing and maybe do something about it, she needs to stop moping and make her feelings known. There’s a large part of her that just wants to scream it from the rooftops, to tell everyone that Vivienne is the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen. She fiddles with the ribbon for at least ten minutes, hands clumsy even without her gloves, and she doesn’t think she’s shaking but when she sets it down she feels as though she needs to recenter herself, she has to take a few deep breaths and squeeze her hands between her thighs. The forge is dark, powered down for the night, and she’s glad no one can see the pink on her cheeks, that no one can see her stripped of her armour and nervous in the middle of the night, but also a part of her wishes for the noise, for the anonymity it affords her.

Vivienne finds the scrap of vellum slightly pushed under her low coffee table, rolled into a tiny scroll with a ribbon tied around it, in the style of a love letter, a style she recognises from her time with Bastien. She thinks back on who had been to see her during that day, and Cassandra being there, flustered and distracted in the bright mid-morning sun, stands out. Vivienne just looks at the note for a long moment, doesn’t unroll it, and her face is as impassive as ever, but she knows that there’s a small smile wobbling there, a smile waiting to emerge. 

She unfurls it when she gets back to her quarters, the sparse room that no one else sees, where she doesn’t have to entertain anyone but herself. She’s good at what she does, she knows it, everyone knows it, but sometimes she’s still glad to remove her hennin at the end of the day, glad to wipe her face clean and undo the tight knots of her corset. Even her pyjamas are impractical, beautiful dainty silk and lack nightgowns with matching shawls and dressing gowns, the kind of nightwear that one would assume someone only ever wore for someone else, but Vivienne’s always loved beautiful things, loved how she looks in them, loves how they make her feel. She sits at her vanity to read it, sees Cassandra’s familiar blocky, spiky scrawl across the small piece of vellum. It’s not signed, but Vivienne thinks that she can’t have tried very hard to hide it, surely she knew that Vivienne got copied into reports that she’s written, reports written in the very same hand. Her handwriting is somewhat like herself, Vivienne thinks, harsh and spiky on the outside to hide the romantic content within.

She almost laughs when she considers that Cassandra could well have sent her an extract from Swords and Shields. When that story made the rounds, of Cassandra being caught with Varric’s very worst romantic serial, Vivienne had thought that it made sense. Cassandra was very fond of her appearance as some sort of knight, fighting for the oppressed and those who could not fight for themselves, but that did not mean that she could never wish to be the damsel in distress in some part of her life. She thought that maybe this was her trying to play the other side, of not knowing how to navigate when she was the more stereotypically masculine one out of the two of them. She wondered how she would react to being wooed in return, to waking up to a mysterious bouquet of flowers and an enigmatic note. She turns her hand to arrangements immediately, deciding that if she were to do this, then she would absolutely do it properly. She thinks of places the two of them could go, of the beach in Crestwood now that the demons have been cleared out, of groves in The Hinterlands, and that one coffee shop in Val Royeaux that’s tucked just out of the way, that she goes to by herself when she’s tired of being Madame De Fer, thinks of Cassandra laughing, one gauntleted hand covering her face. Vivienne has always loved beautiful things, and Cassandra is definitely one of those. She thinks she might just send her some of those fluffy Nevarran pastries that she knows she enjoys too. 

Cassandra is a nervous wreck the next day, not even knowing whether Vivienne found the note of not, and every time she sees her around the castle she bolts in the other direction. This is maybe not the best way to approach it, considering that Vivienne will also be accompanying the Inquisitor on the next expedition out of Skyhold, and knowing Cassandra’s bad luck they’ll be sharing a tent again, because the Maker loves testing her faith, and Vivienne refuses to share with Sera. Regardless, Sera will no doubt be glad to share with Adaar, if the rumours have been correct. Cassandra almost feels terrible for telling her that she wasn’t interested in women, considering Vivienne, but it appears that she might just only be interested in mages, or maybe Viviene is so just so dreadfully proficient that Cassandra couldn’t help herself.

She hacks another dummy to pieces and then sticks her head in a bucket of cold water, forcefully telling herself to calm down. Vivienne probably hasn’t even noticed it, and she doesn’t know what Cassandra’s handwriting looks like anyway, because why would she have bothered to note what it looks like? There’s no reason for her to have any idea what Cassandra’s freaking out about, and therefore she should not make it obvious by acting so strangely. This does not stop her from wheeling in the other direction whenever she sees Vivienne in the distance, and if she continues in this vein someone will, of course, notice. The Inquisitor might be occasionally oblivious to what is happening, but Sera picks up on undercurrents between people far too easily, and she does not wish to become a topic of gossip, or of concern, between the two of them.

She wakes up, a few mornings later, to flowers and a note and some of her favourite pastries at the top of the stairs up from the forge below, as though someone had snuck in and placed them there without wanting to wake her. She wracks her brain as to whether she could have registered the noise, but all she can remember is some kind of dream featuring the glowing green of the breach and a distant, high pitched ringing, like she’d been in some sort of explosion, like she’d been blown apart. She feels some sort of blown apart as she approaches the arrangement carefully, as she notes the steam that still rises from the pastries, evidently acquired from the kitchens fresh out of the oven, just that morning, earlier than the 6am at which Cassandra rises every morning, like clockwork. She is not a morning person, not as she stumbles over to them, not as she takes a deep, indulgent breath of the sweet-scented steam, not as her bleary eyes scan over the items, noticing the card but not awake enough to judge whether she recognises the handwriting or not. Her tummy rumbles as she carries them over to her corner of space upstairs, and she still prays first, before she lets herself read the note, and she tries not to let her impatience affect her prayers, head bowed in the morning sunlight.

She rises, completes her morning rituals, and doesn’t spare another glance at the note until she is awake and dressed for the day, thinks about the pastries and realises that her stomach is rolling, that she’s nauseous with… something, with nerves or stress or the wonder of who it could be, with the worry of what it could say. This time, now that she has fought through her morning grogginess, now that her eyes are working, she thinks that that could be Vivienne’s handwriting, thinks she recognises the swirls and the loops, thinks that she remembers what her name looks like in her hand. Cassandra stops, stares, sits on the one hard, plain chair that is at the table in her corner, and she stares at it. She does not think she can open it, not for a long moment, because she worries, worries that Vivienne knows it was her, that she knows and she does not wish for the attention, that the flowers and the pastries are merely to soften the blow, that Vivienne wishes to tell her to stay away from her, or something nicer, politer, that it will contain words that she does not wish to hear, words that say that her attention is sweet, flattering, cute, clumsy, but unwanted.

She holds what she thinks may be a firm but pleasant rebuttal in not yet gauntleted hands and she can’t help it when she tears into the envelope, her dread turning into a desperate need to know, exactly, what was said. She scans the first few lines, and is confused. It’s a poem. Cassandra searches for some sort of hidden meaning, but it is merely a love poem, one which she has read many times before, one which she has with her, in an anthology that rests in her trunk, and which she did not think anyone had seen her read, because those particular poems were saved for when she was feeling particularly nostalgic for what she once had, for what she had, mostly, accepted she would not have again. She stares, for a long moment, at the “Cassandra” that rests at the top in swirling script, looks at the bold “V.” that rests at the bottom, as though Vivienne had decisively slashed it there, had made certain of its dark presence, and part of her, as it always does, wonders if this is a joke. Wonders if this is an elaborate attempt to mock her, wonders if somehow it’s a part of the game that Vivienne is so fond of, is so proficient at.

She considers storming up to her, considers asking, but she finds herself blushing at the thought, at the thought of facing her, of even seeing her, from afar or otherwise, in the wake of this, in the midst of her turmoil, and she hates that she reacts how she does, takes a moment to consider things. She knows that she is hard headed and rash and she knows that misunderstands things, she knows that she very often does not understand intent. She thinks on it, lets it settle, eats some of the, now cold, pastries, because there’s no point letting them go to waste and she really does love them, has always loved these Nevarran sweets, and she distracts herself for a moment, remembering, remembering Anthony and the crypt and her uncle and home, what she still thinks of as home, sometimes. She brushes that away, tries to concentrate, tries to concentrate on how to tackle the problem of Vivienne, how to tackle what shouldn’t have been a problem in the first place, and she doesn’t bother to wonder how she knew it was her, because Cassandra knows that Vivienne is one of the smartest people in this tiny, lost corner of the world, because she should have known all along that she would have found out, because she thinks a part of her always did know.

She approaches her day as usual. She doesn’t think about the flowers in her room or the pastries that wait for her as replacement for the dessert she usually spurns after a quick dinner in a corner of the kitchen, doesn’t think about her response to the letter, apart from to interrupt her thoughts when they stray to a particular poem, or a section of prose, that she’s read recently, that she thinks could be an appropriate response. She stops those thoughts, interrupts them with meetings and the Inquisitor’s questions, with checking on Cullen and catching up with Leliana and discussions with Josephine. She doesn’t let herself stop, and no one questions this because she never does just take a moment, because she has never been known for her ability to ever take a break, to pause for breath. No one needs to know that today she’s avoiding her thoughts, avoiding engaging with her own brain, avoiding herself.

Her brain picks through poems all day, and she can’t stop that from happening, so by the time she returns to her space above the forge, the space dark and quiet with the fires out for the night, she’s already chosen the poem she wants to copy out. Cassandra does so with an unsteady hand, one that makes her spiky writing look even less polished, even less suited for this than usual, and she wants to throw her ink pot across the room, knows it wouldn’t help. Her hands turn into fists and she lets her frustration show through pressing her fists into the table, not hard enough to hear a crack, but enough that she can feel the resistance, that it gives her some of outlet. She wants to go hack at a training dummy, but she knows that it’s too late, too dark, that Sera would pop her head out of the window, that the Iron Bull would appear out of the tavern and ask what’s wrong and she can’t tell them. She can’t even tell Vivienne, and she knows that she already knows.

She lets the note dry, rolls it into a scroll, and leaves it on her desk, deciding to deliver it that morning, but she can’t sleep, and she ends up padding up to Vivienne’s balcony, wild flowers from around Skyhold’s walls in her hands, glad that everyone is asleep, glad that dawn is not that far off and that no one else would be awake now. She knows she’ll suffer for this during the evening tomorrow, knows that it will be another day of being unable to concentrate and being exhausted on top of that, knows that she is not making her best choices, knows that she doesn’t seem to be able to make those best choices right now. She gets back to her quarters to watch the sunrise, and she sighs and performs her morning ablutions, sets about her day like she usually would, tries to be glad that she saw the sunrise and not think about anything else, tries to revel in the natural beauty that she’s surrounded by, instead of thinking about Vivienne’s eyes or her smirk or the efficient movement of her staff.

Vivienne wakes up and knows that there will be another small scroll waiting for her, and she doesn’t rush, doesn’t rush through her usual morning process, because she’s used to remaining in control, used to containing herself and not letting anything through, whether that be stray magic or unruly facial expressions. She maybe doesn’t linger after her bath like she usually would, but that has nothing to do with what she thinks, hopes, believes, is waiting for her, she just didn’t feel like it today. She doesn’t rush, she lingers to talk to Josephine when she passes her, makes her way to the kitchens first as she usually would, eats her breakfast as she usually does, but she can’t help it when her steps speed up as she climbs the stairs, where no one else can see her, once she knows for sure that she’s alone.

She spots the wildflowers immediately, maybe almost smiles, not that anyone would have seen her expression if she had. She puts them in a vase immediately, arranging them in a way that would have Cassandra gaping at how she had made them look as though they belonged there, making it appear that these flowers that Cassandra had gathered were purposefully cultivated blooms, making it seem as though they were something that Vivienne would have purchased herself. She unfurls the scroll slowly, unable to help the furtive look around her, just in case someone was peering up at her, but sat down she’s impossible to see because of the balcony, and she’s alone with these words that aren’t Cassandra’s but are in her hand, are meant for her, and she thinks that Cassandra’s hand is perfect, it’s wobbling and uneven and in some places she’s almost pressed through the paper, but she can see the emotion, can see the way that Cassandra’s heart sometimes overwhelms her, and she likes that about her, always has done. She likes the way that she can’t control herself, sometimes, even with all of her seeker training, she likes the way that she sometimes throws something down in disgust, that she is blunt and uncompromising and emotional. She is everything that Vivienne has always told herself she cannot be, and she isn’t jealous but purely admiring, she admires that Cassandra has made it this far and has not compromised herself or her morals.

Later, when she is reading a collection of poems, the Inquisitor comes to see her, and she doesn’t hide the book, however much a part of her wants to, because she knows that she won’t read the title, she won’t be concentrating upon that.

“We’re heading out tomorrow,” she tells her, without any skirting about the topic beforehand, and Vivienne nods, posture perfect and gaze steady.

“Who’s coming along?” she asks, casual, and the Inquisitor doesn’t question.

“Same team as usual; me, you, Sera and Cassandra.”

Vivienne nods and the Inquisitor leaves, waving absently over her shoulder, her mind on other things, distracted by the crackling green of the rift and the breach and her dreams, distracted by thoughts of the things that need to be readied before they leave Skyhold with the dawn tomorrow. Vivienne rises, stands looking out over the courtyard on her balcony, like a queen standing over her people, looking out towards where the sun will set in a matter of hours, and thinks of the likelihood that she and Cassandra will be sharing a tent tomorrow night, knowing that it is near certain, as neither of them like to share with Sera, with the Inquisitor having her little flirtation with the elf. Cassandra, who she hasn’t spoken to since this thing with the love notes started, and she thinks for the moment of how foolish it is, of how they’re acting like children with their first crushes, and she shakes her head, thinks of the romances that Cassandra enjoys, thinks of how badly she wants to court her like Cassandra has always wanted, and it doesn’t seem so foolish anymore. It’s not foolish if it’s what Cassandra wants, she realises, distantly, and she looks across the courtyard to where she can just see her, tiny from this far away, hacking at a dummy with the singular focus that Cassandra is uniquely capable of. She watches the Inquisitor cross over to speak to her, sees her look up her balcony, or she thinks she does, sees the way her head snaps back to looking at the Inquisitor when she sees Vivienne looking.

They are quiet on the road. They usually are, the two of them, riding behind the Inquisitor and Sara, who are playing some sort of game, whose laughter is carried back to them by the gentle breeze, and Cassandra thinks that this is not necessarily a dawn that she is glad to see. She thinks back to this morning, to the poem that was waiting for her this morning, a poem that was a clear declaration of intent, a poem that expressed Vivienne’s longing to court her as she deserved to be courted. She blushes, just thinking of it, staring resolutely ahead of her, and doesn’t check to see if Vivienne’s seen her pink cheeks, just stares at the sun on the snow and the glint of the metal clasps on the Inquisitor’s saddle.

The Storm Coast is one of Cassandra’s least favourite places to visit, but she’s glad that it’s not the Fallow Mire, where the mud is unceasing and the rain unflinching and the skeletons neverending. Her and Vivienne have been quiet the entire trip, have made conversation where they have needed to but kept mostly to themselves, but Cassandra keeps finding tiny snatches of verse hidden among her things, and she mostly just questions when, exactly, Vivienne has had time to write them, while they were on the road. Every time she thinks she has rooted them all out she finds another, and she has a small bundle of tiny pieces of parchment tucked deep within her saddlebags, protected by spare armour and a bag of feed for the horses that will keep them from getting wet, if the rain manages to penetrate the material of her bags. She knows it’s Vivienne, knows her hand well enough to be able to pick it out of a lineup of cursive, knows that it’s not Sara or the Inquisitor or even Scout Harding sneaking them in when she gives a report.

She’s in the middle of taking her armour off when Vivienne enters the tent, and she quietly continues as Vivienne copies her, carefully removing her hennin and the outer layers of her still pristine robes, which Cassandra has always struggled to view as armour regardless of the amount of magic imbued within the thin fabric. Vivienne’s laying down, back to her, by the time Cassandra’s pulling off her gambeson, buckles trailing as she sets it aside, her shirt rumpled and sweaty from a day running up and down the hills of this area, and she notices something flutter to the floor. It’s another scrap of poetry, she discovers, holding it up to the candlelight, and when she looks across at Vivienne she notices that she’s ignoring her but her breathing has not evened out, she is not asleep, not even close to it. She thinks about how ridiculous this is, the two of them not talking about it, but she finds herself loath to break the silence, finds herself unwilling to shatter whatever spell has caught the both of them.

She lays down, after having carefully cleaned her armour, her bed roll a respectable distance away, as it had been every night of this trip, her back to Vivienne’s back, and she knows that she should put the scrap of parchment down, but Vivienne can’t see her, isn’t looking, and her breathing is shallowing out as Cass rolls over and blows out the candle. She curls protectively around the piece of paper that she can’t even see in the darkness, illuminated by nothing but the campfire making patterns on the tent wall, and she thinks she can smell Vivienne’s perfume, can hear her breathing, not so far behind her, and she closes her eyes, squeezing them tight, as she sends her nightly prayer to the Maker. She prays for the luck of the Inquisition, prays for the closure of the breach, prays for less deaths, and maybe a part of her prays for something, something that has something to do with Vivienne’s perfume in the air and the scrap of paper in her hand. The Maker never answers her, not directly, but she thinks maybe the shape of the fire on the tent changes, she thinks maybe it tries to tell her something. She falls asleep to vague visions of fire, and someone who she thinks might be Andraste, but could also have been the lead from Swords and Shields, and she thinks that might be some sort of blasphemy, but she pays for it with the disorientation that haunts her when she rises.

Vivienne wakes before Cassandra does, and when she stands she notices something; there’s one of her scraps of parchment, the one that she’d tucked between her plate and her gambeson while she’d been talking to the Inquisitor, on the side of her bed roll, as though she’d fallen asleep holding it. She can’t help the smile, this time, with nobody around to see it, and she wonders if this had been what Cassandra had meant, when she’d talked about being courted, wonders if this is the final proof of Vivienne doing exactly as she had wanted, without being explicitly asked. She thinks about acquiring some flowers, before anyone else wakes, and she slips into her boots and her robes and goes for a quick walk, making a bouquet out of Andraste’s Grace and Elfroot that she thinks looks rather terrible but she knows Cassandra will appreciate, and she slips it in, leaving it at the foot of her bed roll, and then she watches the last of the pinks and oranges burn out of the sky, watches the others around camp begin to wake, and she marshals the content smile she woke up with, concentrates on meditating, concentrates on something other than thinking about Cassandra, holding a piece of paper close to her as she slept.

Cassandra wakes, blearily wipes her eyes and looks over to see Vivienne already awake, as she often was, her hennin removed from where she had carefully placed it the night before, and she hastily picks up the scrap of paper, hastily shoves it deep into her bedroll as though that could undo the possibility that Vivienne had already seen it. She sees the flowers, smiles at the sight of them, and when Vivienne steps back into the tent she has indulged in her time looking at them, has said her morning prayers, is buckled back into her armour. They do not say anything to each other, Cassandra merely nodding and then lowering her eyes, aware of the blush that stains her cheeks, aware of the way that she looks a fool, stuttering and fumbling and unable to communicate, unable to say anything to this woman who is indulging her, who is allowing her to continue with this infatuation, and she thinks that Vivienne must return her feelings, to have been courting her in the way that she wished. She thinks that it must be that, that she must be going through the beginning stages of courting, that soon they will go for walks around Skyhold with their respective chaperones, someone there to stop them from getting too carried away with each other’s company.

She thinks, while they run through another stormy landscape, while Vivienne avoids the mud and Cassandra ends up covered in it, that maybe this is the same as having chaperones, although Sera is far from the sobering company that her uncle would have wished for. She’s too old for courting, too old to still wish for something from those trashy novels that she enjoys, too old to hope for anything more than someone who makes her happy. Part of her still does, still hopes for flowers every day and poetry and the kind of romance that makes her swoon, part of her hopes that these days can stretch on forever, her and Vivienne making eye contact, simultaneously exasperated by Sera, by the Inquisitor, by the Venatori and the Red Templars that attack them. She wants to hold onto this, but she also wants Vivienne, wants her closer than she is, wants to know what she’s thinking when she refuses to let it show on her face, wants to know her microexpressions and what she thinks. It can’t stay like this forever, she thinks, somewhat hopelessly, because she doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to approach her, doesn’t know what she can do except furtively touch the parchment she’s tucked behind her plate armour, unable to feel it through her heavy gauntlets but knowing that it’s there. She wants the candlelit dinners that should follow, wants their romance to progress, but she barely knows it’s there, because Vivienne is impassive, as always, she’s trained by the Orlesian court, trained by taking part in this game that Cassandra has never had time for. She resolves to do… something. She resolves that it must be time, that surely Vivienne is tired of this too, but she thinks, sometimes, that she can see a hint of a smile, right before she lowers her eyes, right as her blush makes it’s inevitable way across her cheeks.

Vivienne enters the tent and Cassandra is waiting for her, is sitting, rigid and upright, upon her bedroll, is looking at the entrance, and she doesn’t lower her eyes today, doesn’t let Vivienne pass in silence, doesn’t allow her to continue forwards, to remove her armour for that day.

“Vivienne, I feel that we must talk.”

“I wondered how long it would take, dear,” she says, and she smiles, and it’s warm and something that Cassandra doesn’t recognise, her face somehow honest.

“I know that the notes were you,” she says, and it’s accusatory, and Vivienne almost smiles, and begins removing the elaborate pieces of plate armour that protect her arms, toeing off her boots in a way that is somehow still graceful.

“Yes, they were,” she pauses, raises an eyebrow. “You’re guilty of the same crime, if you wish to throw accusations around the tent.”

“I know,” she almost stutters, and her gaze falters then, as she marshals her thoughts, wonders what she wanted to say, what she wants. “I just, I, I wanted to know if you meant them. The notes, I mean. And the flowers. And the pastries, which I did very much appreciate.” She stops, then, almost cuts herself off, before she can continue, her hands twisting in her lap, her gauntlets discarded to one side, her gaze returning to her lap, as though she can’t bear to see or hear Vivienne’s response.

“I did,” she replies, and she almost laughs at the way that Cassandra squirms, as though she was expecting Vivienne to be forthcoming, and she finally takes pity on her, kneels beside her on her bedroll. “I find you… charming,” she pauses, lets herself take off the armour of the game, lets herself move away from downplaying her affection, moves away from hiding herself in that way that Cassandra never has. “You’re refreshing, and bold, and blunt, and you’re fierce. Safe, somehow. I trust you.”

Cassandra looks up, and her eyes aren’t wide but she is surprised, surprised that Vivienne could be here, in the middle of nowhere, shining like Andraste has descended here to bless her specifically. “You’re beautiful,” she blurts out, blushing, and Vivienne smiles.

“I know. And so are you, my darling.” She takes her calloused hand, cups it between hers, raises it to her lips, kisses her knuckles softly, and Cassandra looks at her like she’s the only thing she’s ever seen, looks at her like she’s the only thing in this world.

“Have you been… courting me?” she asks, softly, like if she says in a voice louder than a whisper it’ll dissolve in front of her eyes.

“I’ve been trying,” she laughs, quietly but honestly. “You haven’t been making it easy, running away from me at every opportunity.”

Cassandra laughs, shy and quiet and unlike what Vivienne is used to seeing from her, but it’s just as endearing as anything else, because it’s this, the soft side that Vivienne knows she possesses, the soft side that she can’t keep from anyone, it’s that that had intrigued her, had made her want to pursue her. “I know. I didn’t even really mean to send the first note. I thought that you wouldn’t know it was me.”

“You have incredibly distinctive handwriting,” she says, wry. “Now that I have your attention, how would you feel about dinner?”

“I would be honoured to accept,” her face is serious, earnest, in that way that Cassandra often was, and Vivienne smiles.

“I’ll send you a note with details when we get back to Skyhold.” Cassandra can’t help the grin that spreads across her face as she nods, can’t help the way that her emotions are obvious, and she doesn’t feel like she needs to hide them when Vivienne smiles back, a smile that Cassandra wants to get familiar with, a smile that she wants to climb inside of.

Cassandra looks at her, and her face becomes serious, sober, once again, her hands going to Vivienne’s holding them carefully, as though even though she has seen her covered in blood, seen her fight off a dragon, she could still break her accidentally, as though she is fragile and something to be treasured. “Could I… kiss you?” she asks, voice soft, her breath hitching slightly.

Vivienne leans forward, and she’s smiling as she kisses her, softly, and Cassandra thinks that she might be melting, thinks that maybe Vivienne in this tent is what she’s been looking for in the romances she reads, thinks that this might be the perfect ending to the story she has been attempting to tell, the story that she’s been wanting to read, all of these years.


End file.
